Housing.com
 | |
| Type of business | E-commerce, Real Estate, Classifieds |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Headquarters | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Area served | India |
| Founder(s) | Rahul Yadav |
| CEO | Dhruv Agarwal |
| Industry | Real estate |
| Parent | REA Group |
| URL | housing |
| Launched | June 2012 |
| Current status | Active |
Housing.com is a Mumbai-based real estate search portal which allows customers to search for apartments for rent and sale based on geography, number of rooms, and various other filters.[1][2] The company has 6,000 brokers and serves 40 cities in India including Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Delhi.[3][4][5]
History
[edit]A group of twelve students from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay founded Housing.co.in in June 2012.[1][6][7][8] The company purchased Housing.com from San Francisco-based internet entrepreneur, Peter Headington, and the telephone number 03-333-333-333 in September 2013 for a total of $1m.[9][10]
Since its founding in 2012, Housing.com has raised four rounds of funding. The company raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners in June 2013.[2][3][4][11] The company used the funds to create its Data Science Lab and to expand to four cities: Bengaluru, Gurugram, Pune, Hyderabad. [3] [12][13] The company raised another $19M in venture funding, led by Helion Venture Partners, in April 2014.[14][15]
In early March 2015, the company had a nationwide brand launch, and revealed its new brand logo, colours and brand philosophy; with the tagline 'Look Up'. The brand launch was advertised in national newspapers and hoardings in several cities across India; and notably, on the company's social media pages.
In June 2015, Housing.com then-CEO Rahul Yadav accused Sequoia India MD Shailendra Singh of poaching Housing.com staff.[16] Subsequently, he was asked to leave the company altogether, citing objectionable behaviour.[17][18] Rishabh Gupta was temporarily in charge, before being replaced by Jason Kothari in November 2015.[19]
Product
[edit]Housing.com lists properties submitted by users, either brokers or owners, on an interactive map.[6] Search results are filtered by available rooms, lifestyle ratings, child friendliness index (CFI), and area-based pricing.[2][3][7][9][20]
The company has mapped approximately 650,000 houses in India.[4][12]
Data science lab (DSL)
[edit]Housing.com's Data Science Lab (DSL) has generated a number of "Heat Map" algorithms and demand flux maps based on these filters.[5][13] The CFI heat map shows child friendliness in a particular area and it measures neighborhoods on three different criteria: number of schools, number of hospitals and parks, and proximity of these facilities to the area.[9] The algorithms also demonstrate price variations in properties across the city.[5][10]
Acquisition
[edit]Housing.com acquired real estate discussion forum, Indian Real Estate Forum (IREF), for $1.2 Million [21] and Realty BI, a risk assessment firm for realty projects, for $2 Million.[22] Housing.com acquired HomeBuy360, a cloud-based sales lifecycle management platform, for $2 million.[23] They had been merged with Proptiger.
References
[edit]- ^ a b Shravan Bhat (12 February 2014). "housing.com: Born Out of its Founders House Hunt". Forbes India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b c Rebecca Grant (6 June 2014). "Funding Daily Prism". Venture Beat. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b c d Victoria Ho (6 June 2013). "With $2.5M Injection from Nexus, Indian Housing Marketplace Launches in Bangalore". TechCrunch. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b c Nikita Peer (23 June 2014). "housing.com toying with algorithms for old-age friendliness, pollution index & helping find girl friends, too". Tech Circle. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b c "Real Estate portal housing.com launches Price Heat Maps feature". India Digital Review. 7 October 2013. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
- ^ a b Pritam P Hans (April 2013). "Building Search". Business Today. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b Samidha Sharma (4 January 2014). "Helion may lead $8M investment in housing.com". Times of India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ Biswarup Gooptu & Kala Vijayraghavan (11 June 2014). "With fatter paychecks, startups rope in more talent than big cos like IBM, HUL". Economic Times. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b c Sainul K Abudheen (15 November 2013). "Nexus Venture-backed real estate portal housing.com adds 'child friendliness index' to its site; what's new?". Tech Circle India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b Anand Rai (7 October 2013). "Nexus-backed real estate portal housing.com launches price heat maps; what's on offer?". Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ Chitra Rakesh (6 June 2013). "Nexus Venture Partners injects $2.5M in an Indian real estate startup". Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b Peerzada Abrar (20 June 2014). "housing.com founded by IIT graduates makes more room for growth, mops up rs 115 crore". [The Economic Times]. Archived from the original on 22 June 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b Malavika Velayanika (20 June 2014). "$19M funding for Housing.com ups the ante in tech war between real estate portals in India". Tech in Asia. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ "Startups focus on team composition to draw investors". The Economic Times. 3 June 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ Diksha Dutta (25 April 2014). "Excl: housing.com raises close to $18M led by Helion Venture Partners". Tech Circle. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ Investors considering to remove Housing.com co-founder Rahul Yadav as CEO: Sources – timesofindia-economictimes. Articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com. Retrieved on 10 June 2016.
- ^ "Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav sacked by board after email leak". The Indian Express. 1 July 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
- ^ "Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav fired - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
- ^ "We are putting the house back in order: Housing.com's new CEO". livemint.com/. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
- ^ Ashish Sinha (21 January 2014). "Startup Housing.co.in takes a brilliant data based approach to house hunting". Next Big What. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ Housing.com buys real estate forum IREF – timesofindia-economictimes. Articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com (26 March 2015). Retrieved 10 June 2015.
- ^ Housing.com acquires Realty Business Intelligence for Rs 10 Cr. Tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com (12 June 2015). Retrieved on 2015-07-04.
- ^ "Housing.com acquires HomeBuy360". The Hindu. 16 August 2015. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
